Poll: Most Americans oppose white supremacy, some express troubling racial attitudes

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studyguy

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http://www.centerforpolitics.org/cr...s-even-as-majority-oppose-white-supremacists/
New Poll: Some Americans Express Troubling Racial Attitudes Even as Majority Oppose White Supremacists
Among the questions, respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with statements asking whether white people and/or racial minorities in the United States are "under attack." Notably, 14% of all respondents both 1) agreed that white people are under attack and 2) disagreed with the statement that nonwhites are under attack.

Nearly one-third of respondents (31%) strongly or somewhat agreed that the country needs to "protect and preserve its White European heritage." Another third (34%) strongly or somewhat disagreed with the statement, and 29% neither agreed nor disagreed.

Fifty years after the United States Supreme Court struck down bans on mixed-race marriage in Loving v. Virginia, about one-sixth of respondents (16%) agreed with the statement that "marriage should only be allowed between two people of the same race" and an additional 14% neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement, while 4% said they didn't know. In total, about a third failed to express tolerance of interracial marriage. Among whites, 17% agreed that marriage should be restricted to the same race, with 15% neither agreeing nor disagreeing. This was slightly higher than nonwhites (15% agreed, 12% neither agreed nor disagreed).

•Three-fifths (57%) said that Confederate monuments should remain in public spaces, while a quarter (26%) said they should be removed.

•Among African Americans, 54% said all monuments should be removed versus 25% who were inclined to keep all monuments where they are. Whites strongly differed, with two-thirds (67%) saying they should remain in place and just 19% favoring removal.

•39% of respondents strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement that "white people are currently under attack in this country," while 38% disagreed. Strong disagreement (28%) ranked higher than strong agreement (19%)

•Roughly one-third of respondents (32%) said they supported Black Lives Matter

•A plurality of respondents were against BLM, however, with 37% somewhat or strongly opposing the organization.
Click to expand...

Much more in the full article, full poll results at the bottom of the page.
 
I'm not even surprised to be honest. I said this earlier today in another thread, but there is different types of racism, subconscious and outward. This just prove to be the case.
 
So when the article says...

Notably, 14% of all respondents both 1) agreed that white people are under attack and 2) disagreed with the statement that nonwhites are under attack.
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...I shudder to think of what those percentages look like when we isolate only white respondents.
 
Linkura said:
Only 19% of whites favor removal of Confederate momuments? What the FUCK?
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1/5 is pretty high actually. It's an issue that white people legitimately don't understand - "the Confederacy" as a concept has been so thoroughly divorced from slavery that even left-leaning people would put guys like Lee and Jackson in the bucket of flawed but noble American forefathers.

Most either don't care or default to the status quo.
 
These people represent a significant chunk of the political power in the US. We can never lose sight that that is what we are reckoning with
 
jph139 said:
1/5 is pretty high actually. It's an issue that white people legitimately don't understand - "the Confederacy" as a concept has been so thoroughly divorced from slavery that even left-leaning people would put guys like Lee and Jackson in the bucket of flawed but noble American forefathers.

Most either don't care or default to the status quo.
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Yeah, a lot of people in blue states or in an area like mine (NoVA, where we have a lot of battlefields and the Confederacy is handled appropriately in schools) aren't going to understand the history behind these monuments until a point where we actually learn it.
 
Linkura said:
Only 19% of whites favor removal of Confederate momuments? What the FUCK?
Click to expand...
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.

Personally, I would like them removed from public spaces and kept in museums.
 
theignoramus said:
I wonder how many Whites would oppose statues of Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey.
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Garvey was a racist who wanted everyone back in Africa and thought segregation was hunky-dory. I'm sure there'd be plenty of white supremacists who would agree with his ideas, if only because they wanted black people out of the country. They agreed with him back then.

(I don't think most white people, let alone anyone living on Marcus Garvey right near me, actually know who the hell he is.)
 
Among whites, 17% agreed that marriage should be restricted to the same race, with 15% neither agreeing nor disagreeing. This was slightly higher than nonwhites (15% agreed, 12% neither agreed nor disagreed).
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While a lot of shit in that OP is bad, this always pisses me off.

Don't be like the people who keep you down!
 
Karsticles said:
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.
.
Click to expand...

That's really, really dumb opinion he has there, considering many of these monuments are part of an attempt (with some success, I might add) to rewrite history already. (It's dumb for other reasons as well!)
 
Personally, I think beliefs like this are going to get worse in the future mostly because the country is getting more diverse. The chunk of that have those beliefs are probably going to get more radicalized and spread those beliefs a little more to other White Americans.
 
These polls pretty much reinforce my feeling that (roughly) 1/3 of the US is outwardly racist, 1/3 of the US is anti-racist, and 1/3 of the US is too ignorant to care and therefore supports racist policies and institutions because it's how things are and they don't like change.
 
Nearly one-third of respondents (31%) strongly or somewhat agreed that the country needs to “protect and preserve its White European heritage.” Another third (34%) strongly or somewhat disagreed with the statement, and 29% neither agreed nor disagreed.
Click to expand...

I don't read this one as inherently bad if it was stated exactly that way. Wanting to preserve heritage of people who look like you is probably OK, if you're proud of what they accomplished and not just proud of them being white. Doing it at the expense of everyone else's heritage would be the problem. The meaning of the word "protect" is in the eye of the respondent though. It seems loaded in this context - I can see it carrying a lot of meaning for a certain type of respondent.
 
Karsticles said:
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.

Personally, I would like them removed from public spaces and kept in museums.
Click to expand...

That's a very popular stance that I've seen all over. I wonder how that person would feel about statues for school shooters so that we can "remember"

Statues are to honor people not remember what they did
 
Karsticles said:
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.

Personally, I would like them removed from public spaces and kept in museums.
Click to expand...

Although I understand his sentiment, history's already been rewritten in favor of the Confederacy. People still buy into the Lost Cause, or argue that preserving slavery was tangential to their goals.
 
Go to most threads here on GAF, and you'll even see so-called progressives and liberals spouting dog-whistles and 'devil's advocate' positions.

And that goes for both race, gender, and class, where implicit attitudes basically revolve around oppressive status quo politics. It's always the same implication that poor/women/of color ain't shit and you hear this from supposedly 'allies'
 
Karsticles said:
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.

Personally, I would like them removed from public spaces and kept in museums.
Click to expand...
Your coworker sounds like a bad history teacher.

If he was a good history teacher, he would know that wasn't the intention of the monuments.
 
Fuchsdh said:
Garvey was a racist who wanted everyone back in Africa and thought segregation was hunky-dory. I'm sure there'd be plenty of white supremacists who would agree with his ideas, if only because they wanted black people out of the country. They agreed with him back then.

(I don't think most white people, let alone anyone living on Marcus Garvey right near me, actually know who the hell he is.)
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Garvey wanted separation from White people. I don't think that was an unreasonable position to take in 1920s America, where Black WW1 veterans were lynched in the streets and Black neighborhoods were ransacked by marauding White mobs. I will not allow anyone to judge Garvey without considering the barbaric era of racial terrorism he lived in.
 
Karsticles said:
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.
Click to expand...
This frequent argument doesn't really make sense if it's made in good faith. You don't learn lessons from nazism with glorious hitler or SS statues, you learn them with holocaust memorials.
Nevermind that they're rewriting history themselves, considering how many of them were erected in the twentieth century.
 
theignoramus said:
Garvey wanted separation from White people. I don't think that was an unreasonable position to take in 1920s America, where Black WW1 veterans were lynched in the streets and Black neighborhoods were ransacked by marauding White mobs. I will not allow anyone to judge Garvey without considering the barbaric era of racial terrorism he lived in.
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Preach. 19 20's America? I'd want to go home too.
 
Stoop Man said:
Although I understand his sentiment, history's already been rewritten in favor of the Confederacy. People still buy into the Lost Cause, or argue that preserving slavery was tangential to their goals.
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Oh, I know. I grew up learning that in school!

Aselith said:
That's a very popular stance that I've seen all over. I wonder how that person would feel about statues for school shooters so that we can "remember"

Statues are to honor people not remember what they did
Click to expand...
He considered them a parallel to Nazi concentration camps that have been preserved.

I don't think the school shooter example is a good one - that's not a national event. I agree with your general sentiment, though.
 
Karsticles said:
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.

Personally, I would like them removed from public spaces and kept in museums.
Click to expand...
how much you wanna bet he voted trump?
 
theignoramus said:
Garvey wanted separation from White people. I don't think that was an unreasonable position to take in 1920s America, where Black WW1 veterans were lynched in the streets and Black neighborhoods were ransacked by marauding White mobs. I will not allow anyone to judge Garvey without considering the barbaric era of racial terrorism he lived in.
Click to expand...

Uh, Du bois and plenty of social justice campaigners of the day were willing to judge him. When you're cuddling up to the literal KKK, I think it's fair to say that your beliefs are garbage.
 
Fuchsdh said:
Uh, Du bois and plenty of social justice campaigners of the day were willing to judge him. When you're cuddling up to the literal KKK, I think it's fair to say that your beliefs are garbage.
Click to expand...
His beliefs were a product of his era. In an era where anti-Black rhetoric became a national pastime, he offered Black peoole the concept of racial pride and dignity.
Du Bois was a political animal who deeply resented any Black leaders who didn't prescribe to his way of doing things. His condemnation of any Black leader from that era has to be weighted with heavy scrutiny.
 
Fun fact: Marcus Garvey's RBG flag was a response to an immensely popular, anti Black folk song of that era called "every race has a flag but the coon"
(You can hear a rendition of that song in all its hateful glory on youtube.)
 
Karsticles said:
A prior coworker of mine, who is a history teacher and military veteran, wants us to keep the monuments as a way to remember the mistakes our country has made. He fears that removing them would make it too easy to rewrite history. Don't assume everyone wants them kept because they are racist.

Personally, I would like them removed from public spaces and kept in museums.
Click to expand...

Damn, you would think a history teacher would know about things like books or the internet.
 
no surprises there. if you define racist as a KKK cross burning neo nazi, of course people will be against that as a majority....but that dont mean they would not dismiss other types of more casual racism, or systemic racism. The kinds of racism that aren't so in your face and rigidly defined.
 
"I don't support white supremacy, but white people are oppressed, fuck black people's history, we shouldn't mix races, and white culture needs to be preserved."

Okay
 
Damn. I have been an interracial relationship for over 20 years with minimal issues. It's going to be a little weird next time I visit the US with my wife knowing that up to a third of people are against us, if these polls are close to accurate.
 
a Master Ninja said:
And I've got to say I'm pretty disturbed by how many people don't support the legality of interracial marriages.
Click to expand...

That 1/3 figure doesn't surprise me too much. A lot of old people still alive who were growing up/young adults when it was still illegal. It's also about the same number of people who will stand by Trump no matter what. In general, about 1/3 of this country is going to stand by gross hatred like this no matter what.
 
Karsticles said:
He considered them a parallel to Nazi concentration camps that have been preserved.

I don't think the school shooter example is a good one - that's not a national event. I agree with your general sentiment, though.
Click to expand...

Why would that make a difference? These aren't national momnuments
 
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